If science is needed to make India self-reliant as opined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the annual event of Indian Science Congress 2023, then the gateway to research career--PhD training-- should be fundamentally reformed. The training needs to meet the demands of society and should be priming for translational work and development. Only the academic mindset would lack the necessary apprenticeship to train and mentor in these skills, seriously impeding a growth mindset towards societal challenges and an act to innovate, practice, and demonstrate.
The key is to acknowledge research as a job, a thesis- a project, and stop pretending PhD scholars as students. PhD training should no longer be a pastime to stamp an authority of lifetime academic learning but a job with a career path that possibly branches out to teaching, research, industry or even entrepreneurship. Having said that, basic science done in labs is not overfinanced, and many of the products we use come from basic science done in labs, after patenting, and the companies buying the royalty to push the product forward. Hence, the credulous journey of basic research cannot be underestimated, but time is rife that companies could invest more in university research to manifest such reforms. Alternatively, the Government universities or research institutions should seek industry support for professional development and allow user-inspired research and innovations.
Needless to say, the number of students awarded PhDs each year is increasing in several countries. In India, 17,850 students graduated in 2004, which increased to 25,095 in 2016. It is no different in developed economies, as in South Korea, the number of PhDs who graduated in 2016 was 13,882 compared to 7,950 in 2004, 9,400 in 2008, 12,243 in 2012, and 12,931 in 2014. In the US, the figures climbed from 48,500 to 69,525 over the same period [Source: M. Nerad et al. (eds) Towards a global core value system in doctoral education].
The growth is not overtly demanding if a significant portion of these PhD trainees have enjoyed experiential learning, taught specialist courses, worked in cross-disciplinary teams, nurtured and collaborated on quality-assurance measures and learned the trade of scientific communication. Considering PhD grads as eminent qualified citizen scientists, they should be inclusive of any country’s economy and skilled to participate in the challenges in academia, research or industry. The bottom-line is to allow them to be more mindful of the relevance of their work and its impact.
As academia is mindful that they no longer can employ an increasing number of doctorate holders, traditional ‘academic doctorates’ could be diversified to ‘collaborative doctorates’, ‘industrial doctorates' or simply ‘professional doctorates’ and make PhD training more relatable to skills outside academia. It would be wiser to have an orientation schedule for PhD scholars for collaborative research, academia, industry and society before they pursue their study design. Two chapters of the thesis modulated towards basic research to obtain a preliminary proof-of-concept idea, and the final chapter to translate the concept for the benefit of the stakeholders would be purposeful.
The environment of the doctoral programme should offer skills that could act as a primer for the graduates to transition to the labour market beyond academia. Moreover, the doctoral programmes should enthuse management principles including class and lab management, research fund management, and research communications management. The skills would be useful to get them trained in independent research practice and allow them to apply for fixed-term positions as post-doctoral or research scientists with the availability of minimal permanent positions.
PhD training is incomplete without teaching the art of scientific activity (publications in journals, books, news media, social media), as it fosters positive contributions towards research productivity and improves the scope and outlook of PhD grads. Why would it be challenging to publish in an SCI/SCI-E or Scopus-indexed journal after contributing at least a year of quality time to research? Moreover, the researchers, academicians, and the PhD scholars (first authors) should be rewarded for publishing in journals (standard to be set by the academic bodies or research organisations), provided ethics of justice is practiced. The process of data analysis and the art of writing, revising, and reviewing a scholarly publication trains the research appetite of PhD scholars and empowers them to have a personal research space for networking globally.
(Dr Patnaik is Associate Professor, PG Department of Biosciences and Biotechnology, Fakir Mohan University, Baleswar and National Research Foundation of Korea fellow, Korea Native Animal Resources Utilization Convergence Research Institute (KNAR) (Ministry of Education), Soonchunhyang University, Korea.)